MADNESS IN SEARCH OF

[MrMrsMrsMr]

have you ever used the "in your face" first line in your poem as the catalyst to end it?

First attempt at an in your face first line that ends the poem. Probably needs a better name etc.

Hot Joe

Suddenly,
the coffee
in my cup
tastes of
crows

your eyes
are ants,
they race
over my tits
the crows
in my coffee
fly.



2nd play around.


Brunch at Sessrúmnir after the battle at Singasteinn.

Freyja frying in a pan. Skull cracked brain yoke speared. Loki is an egg.

 

[42BelowsBack]

Years ago a guest speaker at a thing, extolled the virtues of free writing everyday. They had a technique that worked for them. It didn’t work for me.

Feeling creatively flat, I decided to reread a poem RAIN by @Wat_Tyler. Rain is a good example of how writing through flat moments generates raw material to craft a poem. I like the imaginative invitations, scent, sight, a deeper philosophical post hurricane purpose.

Don’t get me wrong, feeling flat, it’s not a muse thing for me. It’s a thinking too hard kind of thing, looking at the tools in my tool box. Instead of using them. In reading this poem I can see, flat moments can be productive.

 

[SpermFactory]

IN YOUR FACE

Fuck you forehead worry lines laughing crows feet dancing until I smile

 

[Angeline]

@Angeline you write with the level of creative control I aspire to. A lot to unpack here. Reading with a specific focus never entered my mind.

Thank you. I feel I've been less successful than in past years, but I do believe reading poems to do more than appreciate/experience them helps inform my own efforts.

I was trained as a line editor and while it does, in some ways, ruin reading lol (my first mentor warned me!), it takes you out of the world of content and forces you to look at sentences (or lines in a poem) word by word, to consider the necessity of punctuation, to think about how space around and between words and lines affect meaning and impact.

I think those are pretty good guidelines for reading a poem *after* that first read just to experience it. So you can go back multiple times and question the word choices, the words used to break and begin lines, the use of things like rhyme, alliteration, assonance. What images are really working, what metaphors? Why punctuation or not, same with space, margins, anything that can affect your perception as a reader.

It sounds like a lot of work huh? It is when you start doing it. And fortunately with great poems there's a lot of analysis already available online and off that can help you understand (and decide whether you agree). The more you do this when you read, the easier it gets. It's always about practice lol. But the biggest payoff is that it gets you thinking about your own writing that way. For me that begins happening at the editing stage: the first draft is just getting the basic ideas down.

Hope I haven't rambled too much! But being methodical in these ways I've described really help me both as reader and writer.

 

[SpermFactory]

Thank you. I feel I've been less successful than in past years, but I do believe reading poems to do more than appreciate/experience them helps inform my own efforts.

I was trained as a line editor and while it does, in some ways, ruin reading lol (my first mentor warned me!), it takes you out of the world of content and forces you to look at sentences (or lines in a poem) word by word, to consider the necessity of punctuation, to think about how space around and between words and lines affect meaning and impact.

I think those are pretty good guidelines for reading a poem *after* that first read just to experience it. So you can go back multiple times and question the word choices, the words used to break and begin lines, the use of things like rhyme, alliteration, assonance. What images are really working, what metaphors? Why punctuation or not, same with space, margins, anything that can affect your perception as a reader.

It sounds like a lot of work huh? It is when you start doing it. And fortunately with great poems there's a lot of analysis already available online and off that can help you understand (and decide whether you agree). The more you do this when you read, the easier it gets. It's always about practice lol. But the biggest payoff is that it gets you thinking about your own writing that way. For me that begins happening at the editing stage: the first draft is just getting the basic ideas down.

Hope I haven't rambled too much! But being methodical in these ways I've described really help me both as reader and writer.

Yeah I do all that too

 

[SpermFactory]

@MrMrsMrsMr, I can’t work out whether your poem The Rib is a piss take or some seriously kinky Kirker s#it?

Since I’m being annoying, midway through The Rib there is a weird idk twist in it? The pov changes somehow? idk I can’t put my finger on it

 

[MrMrsMrsMr]

@MrMrsMrsMr, I can’t work out whether your poem The Rib is a piss take or some seriously kinky Kirker s#it?

Since I’m being annoying, midway through The Rib there is a weird idk twist in it? The pov changes somehow? idk I can’t put my finger on it

Thanks. I edited it. I think it reads clearer now.

 

[Hotcoffee123]

Do you have an example?

 

[42BelowsBack]

Mind maps, images and poems. I have been making mind maps out of images. Then ordering the extrapolated words to create a poem. As you would expect early results have been a jumble sale. Generating poems from objects in my surrounds seem to work in this way also.

I have also been reading creative non fiction opinion pieces. Sometimes I take a paragraph or a sentence and ask myself what it looks like as an image, or how could it be translated into a poem?

 

[42BelowsBack]

Most of all I have been working on a collection of poems (on and off). I haven’t figured out a way of being more disciplined as a writer.

 

[Angeline]

Mind maps, images and poems. I have been making mind maps out of images. Then ordering the extrapolated words to create a poem. As you would expect early results have been a jumble sale. Generating poems from objects in my surrounds seem to work in this way also.

I have also been reading creative non fiction opinion pieces. Sometimes I take a paragraph or a sentence and ask myself what it looks like as an image, or how could it be translated into a poem?

Are you familiar with ekphrastic poetry? We did a challenge for it (from the ever inquisitive mind of Tzara of course) that may interest you.

 

[42BelowsBack]

Are you familiar with ekphrastic poetry? We did a challenge for it (from the ever inquisitive mind of Tzara of course) that may interest you.

Yeah. I wrote as part of that challenge. I forgot about it of course, however as I wrote my comment I thought hmm this idea rings a bell

Here’s the bell lol Inspired by Titian’s painting of Flōra and Florentine festivals.

It Rained in Florence

Your face is the sun
You place its golden coin

In my broken body
My engine is in parts

In your pink shaded mantle
Oil spills across my canvas

to melt the pure wool of winter
from my wind leathered sinew

the lean bone of winter
perennial as your sacrifice

I am at once your
Flamen and Flaminica

singing to the fecundity of life
singing with your husband

the Wind in Florence
you are a Titian

Flōra forever.
Leaves turned into spring

 

[Angeline]

Yea. I wrote as part of that challenge. I forgot about it of course, however as I wrote my comment I thought hmm this idea rings a bell

Here’s the bell lol Inspired by Titian’s painting of Flōra and Florentine festivals.

It Rained in Florence

Your face is the sun
You place its golden coin

In my broken body
My engine is in parts

In your pink shaded mantle
Oil spills across my canvas

to melt the pure wool of winter
from my wind leathered sinew

the lean bone of winter
perennial as your sacrifice

I am at once your
Flamen and Flaminica

singing to the fecundity of life
singing with your husband

the Wind in Florence
you are a Titian

Flōra forever.
Leaves turned into spring

Ok. I remember the poem. We discussed it a while back. I'd forgotten you did it after reading the ekphrastic thread.